Acquisitions Directorate

All members of the Acquisitions Directorate are members of dragonmarked houses—although in some cases the genealogical connection is tenuous. What the Twelve ultimately cares about is loyalty to the Houses. It runs background checks and conducts magical investigations to make sure that new members don’t have strong allegiances to nations, secret societies, or other organizations that might come into conflict with the Twelve. Each new member must also be vouched for by a senior member of a dragonmarked house. The quality of the recruit reflects on that senior member; no one wants to sponsor an initiate who turns out to be incompetent, obnoxious, or a traitor.

The directorate is willing to train young members who show promise, so neither great skill nor power are needed right away. As long as prospective members display great ambition, loyalty to the dragonmarked houses, and a fascination with the magic of ancient civilizations, the Twelve will accept them into the Acquisitions Directorate.

Most members of the Twelve have at least a modicum of arcane spellcasting ability, and many are academic researchers who rarely leave their libraries and laboratories. In the acquisitions directorate, however, it’s a different story.

The Twelve will go anywhere and do anything to get its hands on artifacts and other powerful magic, so they need agents who are combat experts capable of facing everything from angry natives to undead tomb guardians to Things That Should Not Be. The acquisitions directorate wants agents (such as bards and rogues) at home in cities across Khorvaire, as well as those good at reaching remote tombs and other stores of antiquities (barbarians, druids, and rangers). The acquisitions directorate has great appeal to wizards and sorcerers as well; they benefit the most from the Twelve’s research, and they’re most likely to seek ascension to leadership positions within the Twelve.

When you join the acquisitions directorate, you receive a few months’ training in the basics of what the Twelve looks for when it’s seeking arcane treasures. A group of recruits are generally given a relatively simple part of a larger mission, and more experienced members of the directorate keep an eye on you and your comrades. Only as you complete more missions successfully will you learn more about the inner workings of the Twelve, and by extension the political struggles among the dragonmarked houses.

Independent explorers and those affiliated with the Wayfinder Foundation tend to be more individually capable and tenacious, but explorers associated with the Acquisitions Directorate have a key advantage: the resources of the twelve dragonmarked houses.

Economics: Wayfinders and independent explorers generally can keep or sell whatever they find on their journeys, but the Acquisitions Directorate has a right of first refusal on anything its members find during their explorations. In most cases, only a few items from a treasure hoard will interest the Directorate’s scholars. If an expedition from the Directorate has the specific goal of “retrieve the Lost Scrolls of Saarik from the Q’Barran ziggurat,” then most of the other treasures from the ziggurat are yours to keep. You’re expected to let researchers from the Twelve examine whatever you bring back, and they can keep what they like.

The flip side to losing treasure is that the Twelve will buy art objects, magic items, and other goods you acquire while exploring for 65% of their market value, rather than the standard 50%. The Twelve then transfers those items to the dragonmarked houses, which use or sell them in turn.

The directorate provides other economic benefits as well. Members of the Acquisitions Directorate get free passage on the various conveyances of House Orien and House Lyrandar when they’re undertaking a mission on behalf of the Twelve. Even when they’re doing “independent research,” they pay only 50% of the usual fare.

Gear: The Acquisitions Directorate provides expeditions into remote areas with a vast array of mundane logistical help, such as draft animals, porters, guides, and manual laborers for excavations. A wagon train of explorers from the directorate is well stocked with the basic tools of the explorer: rope, pitons, food, map parchment, and so on. Characters are responsible for unusual gear such as bags of holding, chimes of opening, and griffon mounts.

Services: Where the Acquisitions Directorate really shines is in the services it provides for its explorers. If your mission is important enough, you’ll have some of the Twelve’s most powerful arcanists available to help you with transport, divination, or other spellcasting needs. If you need armed guards to help you get through the Shadow Marches, House Deneith might supply mercenaries to guard your caravan. Through the Twelve, you’re connected to each of the dragonmarked houses, and receiving anything from financial advice to a cavalry rescue is a matter of demonstrating to the relevant dragonmarked house that your expedition is a priority.

The Twelve doesn’t rule the dragonmarked houses, of course, and interhouse rivalries sometimes make it hard for Acquisitions Directorate explorers to get the help they need. Getting services based on your status with the directorate isn’t automatic—but it’s a lot easier than it would be for an independent explorer. Information: Through the Twelve, you have access to some of Khorvaire’s finest arcane researchers. When you contact one of the Twelve’s citadels, you can get access to a network of sages with Knowledge (arcana) +15 and Knowledge (any other category) +10. It takes two days to set up an appointment, and the sages will require research time for particularly complex queries. You can also get language translation with a one-day turnaround. Wizards working for the acquisitions directorate can get free access to one spell a week, paying only the cost for a scribe to transfer it to a personal spellbook.

Access: Only members of the Twelve get beyond the foyer of the Twelve’s citadels, which combine the salient features of libraries, laboratories, noble manors, and fortresses. Not all citadels are open to members of the Acquisitions Directorate; there are some locations that are used for particularly dangerous research and are therefore off-limits, but the publically known citadels are always open to members of the Acquisitions Directorate.

Status: Joining the Acquisitions Directorate is a good way to achieve a measure of notoriety within the Twelve, but it isn’t a traditional path to political or arcane power. Because members of the Acquisitions Directorate are away from the citadels most of the time, they aren’t privy to many of the political machinations that set the leadership course for the Twelve. In addition, explorers are bringing items back for others to study, rather than doing the fundamental research themselves. Among the Twelve, it’s more prestigious to translate the Lost Scrolls of Saarik than it is to find them in the first place.

You are results-oriented and the product of a politically turbulent part of society. Accordingly, you take an “ends justify the means” attitude toward many of your expeditions. Accomplishing the expedition’s goal is what matters, as long as you don’t complicate matters for yourself, your house, or the Twelve in the process. If you have to leave a trail of orc bodies behind you as you reach a tomb in the Shadow Marches, so be it. As long as they aren’t members of House Tharashk, no one important will care.

You have a degree of loyalty to the Acquisitions Directorate and the Twelve as a whole, but you aren’t above playing power games with some individual members. As long as it’s done subtly, there’s nothing wrong with sabotaging the expedition of a rival explorer or embarrassing your superior, then taking her place.

Combat

Members of the Acquisitions Directorate avoid combat whenever possible—not because they’re afraid, but because a prolonged combat rarely brings one closer to the goal of the expedition. You can be ruthless when you’re eliminating a rival explorer or trying to frighten the natives. Throughout a battle, though, you’re weighing the costs and benefits of continuing to fight.

Even if a fight is inevitable, you rarely take it personally, and you might try to cut a deal with your foes even as you attack them. Many a directorate member has struck a partnership over a crossed blade—and some of those partnerships last long enough to come to fruition rather than ending in a backstab or other recrimination.

Because the Twelve has the resources of the dragonmarked houses to fall back on, you’ll often fight from behind rows of low-level minions. Your rank-and-file allies are expendable, but they damage your enemies through attrition and give you time to observe your enemies in action and prepare the perfect response to their likely tactics.

Advancement

Rising through the ranks of the Acquisitions Directorate requires a combination of competence at exploration and political acumen to keep rival power-seekers at bay. As you bring back treasures for the Twelve to study, you’ll get more important assignments, a bigger say in expedition planning, and more resources at your disposal.

Eventually, however, you’ll reach a point beyond which advancement is rare. Many explorers don’t care about acquiring political power within the Twelve; they’re too busy planning ever more ambitious expeditions. The acquisitions members who harbor political ambitions eventually transfer to one of the Twelve’s other directorates, due to the difficulties of rising in the organization when you’re halfway across the world most of the time. Other members of the directorate leave the Twelve entirely, if they have a chance to advance their standing in the dragonmarked house to which they belong.

Working in the Twelve’s Acquisitions Directorate is a life of constant travel between the Twelve’s citadels and the most remote places in Eberron. You’re always planning an expedition, undertaking an expedition, or bringing your magic treasures back to the Twelve for study. The Acquisitions Directorate is scouring every tomb, ruin, and lost city its members can find, looking for the magical secrets of bygone ages. One month you might be trekking through the mountains of the Mror Holds in search of a haunted monastery that appears only when the moon is full. Next month, you’re off to Xen’drik and tense negotiations with a drow tribe that has found an ancient giant burial ground. Responsibilities: The Twelve is a patient, wealthy organization, so it doesn’t mind if you take periodic breaks from directorate-sponsored expeditions to tend to your own affairs. Particularly if high-ranking members of your dragonmarked house request your services, the Twelve is willing to put you on “detached duty” for several months at a time.

The Twelve does frown on independent explorations, however—unless you find something particularly powerful and bring it back to the Twelve. (If you get results for the Twelve, you aren’t being rebellious, you’re showing initiative.)

The Acquisitions Directorate claims the right of first refusal even if it didn’t sanction your expedition. Most explorers find that the directorate keeps them busy with enough interesting expeditions that they aren’t tempted to undertake freelance exploration. If you do go off on your own adventures, consider how you can conceal your activities from your masters among the Twelve. It is not uncommon for agents of the Twelve to show up at an inconvenient time and start rooting through the treasure you’ve accumulated.

“We were this close to translating the inscription on the giant mosaic. Then the Twelve showed up with a bunch of soldiers and collapsed the wall to reveal a thousand urns with magical sigils floating above them. They held us at spearpoint while they loaded all the urns onto one of House Lyrandar’s elemental galleons. Bastards.”

—Arin Faleart, Wayfinder Foundation explorer

The Acquisitions Directorate works well as a rival for PC explorers—or as a potential employer for PCs of a more mercenary bent. Because it has the backing of the dragonmarked houses, it also has resources that other adventurers lack. Its members’ pragmatic ambition infuriates those who explore for more altruistic reasons. In short, it’s a recipe for jealousy and enmity when its members confront PCs who are exploring on their own.

Organization: Every dragonmarked house has a seat on the council that directs the affairs of the Twelve, but that council is more concerned with research and development of new spells and devices than with planning the expeditions that bring new mysteries into the Twelve’s workshops. Leadership of the Acquisitions Directorate falls to senior director Koleb d’Tharashk (N male human ranger 1/wizard 9/dragonmark heir 1). As long as Koleb provides a steady stream of magic treasures for the Twelve to study, no one interferes with the expedition planning of his directorate.

Though he’s an accomplished explorer in his own right, Koleb spends little time in the field anymore. When he’s not helping his subordinates plan new expeditions, he’s meeting with the Twelve’s sages and researchers, fielding the specific requests that often spawn expeditions. A House Cannith researcher might say, “we need more of the warforged components you found last year in Xen’drik,” and a House Thuranni agent could request “certain Khyber dragonshards that are a midnight blue streaked with pulsing white veins.” Koleb will then plan expeditions accordingly.

Koleb has a large staff of “expedition directors” that handle most of the day-to-day details of the directorate. He also has an unobtrusive “silent partner” in the directorate: Glaurai d’Phiarlan (NE female elf rogue 7/dragonmark heir 3). Glaurai runs the part of the acquisitions directorate that most directorate members don’t know about: a shadowy group known as the “Project Reclamation.” Glaurai directs teams that acquire magic treasures from places other than ruins, crypts, and other remote locations. Specifically, Project Reclamation steals powerful magic items from national governments, private citizens, and anyone else who has them. Then Glaurai and Koleb turn the treasures over to the Twelve’s researchers, who know better than to ask where they came from. Glaurai keeps tabs on the directorate’s more traditional explorers as well, the better to occasionally recruit new members of Project Reclamation.

NPC Reactions

The Twelve is a prestigious organization, and NPCs tend react positively to PCs affiliated with it. For members of the acquisitions directorate, however, that positive reaction is tempered by the fact that Twelve is known as a college of arcane researchers, not a bunch of grimy explorers cutting their way through the jungles of Xen’drik. Accordingly, many of the directorate’s explorers take pains to keep their tunics clean and openly display their House affiliation. If a directorate explorer can leave the machete and shovel work to hired laborers, so much the better.

NPCs who regularly deal with the Twelve or depend on one of the dragonmarked houses for their livelihood have a starting attitude of friendly toward members of the Acquisitions Directorate. Those who have an academic background in magic—ranks in Knowledge (arcana), in other words—have a starting attitude of friendly unless they’re part of a group that has a rivalry with the Twelve.

While the Acquisitions Directorate has many rivals and enemies, three rivals merit special mention. Breland’s Arcane Congress competes with the Twelve in everything from rare magic items to promising apprentices, so Congress members will have a starting attitude of unfriendly toward the Acquisitions Directorate. The Wayfinder Foundation is hostile toward Acquisitions Directorate explorers—the directorate has stolen countless discoveries from the grasp of the Wayfinder Foundation.

Finally, Baron Merrix’s faction within House Cannith is suspicious of the Twelve and reluctant to share the House’s discoveries with the other houses— particularly where warforged magic is concerned. Those affiliated with the Merrix faction have a starting attitude of unfriendly toward the Acquisitions Directorate, though they might cloak their true feelings behind a veneer of false friendship.

The most common way to integrate the Acquisitions Directorate in an ongoing campaign is to make a directorate researcher into an ongoing rival for the PCs. By accident or design, a member of the Acquisitions Directorate winds up getting assignments that run counter to the PCs’ plans. The characters will have to use their pluck, guile, and skill to match the Acquisitions Directorate’s advantage in resources. If the PCs are trying to recover an artifact from under the noses of Argonessen’s dragons, they might gain and lose it repeatedly to an explorer from the Acquisitions Directorate—a rival explorer whom the PCs will love to hate.

The Acquisitions Directorate also makes a compelling patron, especially for characters affiliated with one of the dragonmarked houses and those who explore Eberron for less than idealistic reasons. Allow the PCs to take advantage of the hirelings, magical transportation, and other perks of joining the Acquisitions Directorate. Over time, introduce the costs associated with those advantages: intradirectorate rivalries, political machinations, and the feeling of being just a small cog in a vast economic enterprise.

Adaptation: It’s easy to detach the Acquisitions Directorate from the Twelve—and if PCs with no possible connection to the dragonmarked houses intend to join, you may have to. The core concept behind the Acquisitions Directorate is straightforward: amoral explorers who plunder tombs for magic. Almost everyone in the world of Eberron wants to study rare magic, so you can make the Acquisitions Directorate into a branch of a national government, an independent “broker to archmages” organization, a cabal with the Aurum, or a front for a secret society bent on world domination by gathering specific artifacts.

Encounters: If you’re going to use an Acquisitions Directorate explorer as an ongoing rival, it’s important to give the NPC a good chance to survive and mess with the PCs’ plans on another day. Before confronting the PCs, a directorate explorer always has an escape route planned. After all, even an artifact isn’t more valuable than the explorer’s own skin, and the directorate can always plot to get the item back later. The escape plan shouldn’t necessarily be foolproof, but the directorate explorer certainly has the resources to come up with something good. She’ll interpose minions in front of pursuing PCs, grab the rope ladder leading to a House Lyrandar airship, or use teleportation magic to disappear in a flash.